Des origines aux nouveaux enjeux de l'action humanitaire : l'expérience d'une ONG canadienne

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

A matriz socio-politica brasileira e as organizações não governamentais : cartografias do devir

A presente dissertação discute o devir das Organizações NãoGovernamentais no Brasil à luz de nossa matriz sócio-política bem como da própria crise civilizatória hodierna. Considerando os desafios inerentes à complexa relação Estado/Sociedade no Brasil, quer pela fragilidade tanto do atual quadro políticoinstitucional quanto da capacidade de organização e democratização da sociedade civil, bem como os imperativos político-econômicos da "nova ordem internacional", buscamos elaborar alguns cenários em que as ONG, para lograrem seus objetivos sociais e políticos, deverão passar por profundas transformações organizacionais e institucionais. À luz das contradições de um modelo de desenvolvimento, política e socialmente excludente, reiteradamente agravadas pelo avanço do neoliberalismo e pela fragmentação de uma modalidade de democracia minimalista, pensamos caber às ONG um papel significativo na mobilização e democratização da sociedade civil brasileira rumo à reconstrução de uma matriz sócio-política capaz de resgatar o povo à nacionalidade, à soberania e à justiça sócio-econômica.

Tecendo vivências e sentidos do câncer infantil : família, doença e redes de apoio social em Natal-RN

This paper discusses the experiences related to the treatment of children´s cancer which had children, their mothers and families as their main characters. They were mainly originated from areas in the countryside and urban poor areas in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The non-governmental organization Grupo de Apoio à Criança com Câncer (GACC) was the privileged ethnographic location. In this setting, the mother, which was called acompanhante (companion), and the children, defined as pacientes (patients), were often sheltered in reason of therapeutic practices and the treatment undertaken by children in a nearby hospital. This study aims to focus on the therapeutic itinerary, beyond the children´s suffering, dealing with the family as a whole, since the moral values from these popular families imply the complete involvement of the family in relation to the illness and its treatment. Therefore, it is experienced as a family problem. We also intend to understand the construction of meanings to the illness, dealing with the ideological continuity in the relationships between the families and the GACC. These meanings were built in the intersection of these two spheres, which refer particularly to medical, religious and emotional explanations. Ethnographic methods were applied in this research at the entity and another social contexts, such as the family households. I also tried to retrieve the process of treatment outside the GACC, visiting the family context, when doing dense interviews or just having conversations with informants. It was found that the GACC, as a non-governmental organization, generates a negotiation of identities, which develops, then, through the family as a whole, but also through the child and especially the mother, affecting, in some way, their internal organization. Furthermore, the meanings of the experience of illness appeared to be shaped by the family sphere as well as by the logic of public health structures

Tecendo vivências e sentidos do câncer infantil : família, doença e redes de apoio social em Natal-RN

This paper discusses the experiences related to the treatment of children´s cancer which had children, their mothers and families as their main characters. They were mainly originated from areas in the countryside and urban poor areas in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The non-governmental organization Grupo de Apoio à Criança com Câncer (GACC) was the privileged ethnographic location. In this setting, the mother, which was called acompanhante (companion), and the children, defined as pacientes (patients), were often sheltered in reason of therapeutic practices and the treatment undertaken by children in a nearby hospital. This study aims to focus on the therapeutic itinerary, beyond the children´s suffering, dealing with the family as a whole, since the moral values from these popular families imply the complete involvement of the family in relation to the illness and its treatment. Therefore, it is experienced as a family problem. We also intend to understand the construction of meanings to the illness, dealing with the ideological continuity in the relationships between the families and the GACC. These meanings were built in the intersection of these two spheres, which refer particularly to medical, religious and emotional explanations. Ethnographic methods were applied in this research at the entity and another social contexts, such as the family households. I also tried to retrieve the process of treatment outside the GACC, visiting the family context, when doing dense interviews or just having conversations with informants. It was found that the GACC, as a non-governmental organization, generates a negotiation of identities, which develops, then, through the family as a whole, but also through the child and especially the mother, affecting, in some way, their internal organization. Furthermore, the meanings of the experience of illness appeared to be shaped by the family sphere as well as by the logic of public health structures

Tecendo vivências e sentidos do câncer infantil : família, doença e redes de apoio social em Natal-RN

This paper discusses the experiences related to the treatment of children´s cancer which had children, their mothers and families as their main characters. They were mainly originated from areas in the countryside and urban poor areas in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The non-governmental organization Grupo de Apoio à Criança com Câncer (GACC) was the privileged ethnographic location. In this setting, the mother, which was called acompanhante (companion), and the children, defined as pacientes (patients), were often sheltered in reason of therapeutic practices and the treatment undertaken by children in a nearby hospital. This study aims to focus on the therapeutic itinerary, beyond the children´s suffering, dealing with the family as a whole, since the moral values from these popular families imply the complete involvement of the family in relation to the illness and its treatment. Therefore, it is experienced as a family problem. We also intend to understand the construction of meanings to the illness, dealing with the ideological continuity in the relationships between the families and the GACC. These meanings were built in the intersection of these two spheres, which refer particularly to medical, religious and emotional explanations. Ethnographic methods were applied in this research at the entity and another social contexts, such as the family households. I also tried to retrieve the process of treatment outside the GACC, visiting the family context, when doing dense interviews or just having conversations with informants. It was found that the GACC, as a non-governmental organization, generates a negotiation of identities, which develops, then, through the family as a whole, but also through the child and especially the mother, affecting, in some way, their internal organization. Furthermore, the meanings of the experience of illness appeared to be shaped by the family sphere as well as by the logic of public health structures

Correcting for bias when estimating the cost of hospital-acquired infection : an analysis of lower respiratory tract infections in non-surgical patients

Hospital acquired infections (HAI) are costly but many are avoidable. Evaluating prevention programmes requires data on their costs and benefits. Estimating the actual costs of HAI (a measure of the cost savings due to prevention) is difficult as HAI changes cost by extending patient length of stay, yet, length of stay is a major risk factor for HAI. This endogeneity bias can confound attempts to measure accurately the cost of HAI. We propose a two-stage instrumental variables estimation strategy that explicitly controls for the endogeneity between risk of HAI and length of stay. We find that a 10% reduction in ex ante risk of HAI results in an expected savings of £693 ($US 984).

A Petrov-Galerkin method for a singularly perturbed ordinary differential equation with non-smooth data

In this paper, a singularly perturbed ordinary differential equation with non-smooth data is considered. The numerical method is generated by means of a Petrov-Galerkin finite element method with the piecewise-exponential test function and the piecewise-linear trial function. At the discontinuous point of the coefficient, a special technique is used. The method is shown to be first-order accurate and singular perturbation parameter uniform convergence. Finally, numerical results are presented, which are in agreement with theoretical results.